Terrafugia’s Innovative Roadable Plane (Flying Car)
By Vik Kachoria | January 13, 2009
Here’s a problem that every private pilot has experienced:
You hop into your Piper or Cessna at Hanscom and fly to the Vineyard for the weekend. But once you land on the island, how do you get from the airport to your vacation home in Edgartown?
Terrafugia, based in Woburn, MA, is developing the first ‘roadable plane’ which solves this problem by providing a plane whose wings fold vertically next to the fuselage after landing so the plane can be driven away like any car.
The company’s founder, Carl Dietrich takes pains to call this a roadable plane instead of a flying car since you have to first be a pilot to fly this plane. (you also have to have a driver’s license to drive the car).
Mr. Dietrich is a Phd aeronautical enginner from MIT, a winner of the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize For Innovation, a runner-up in MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship Competition and a private pilot.
The company demoed a 1/5 scaled remote-control version of the car at Oshkosh in 2007. It also conducted a high speed taxi test of a full version in December 2008.
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